Apple iMac and Macbook's built-in wireless card is known to have limited coverage as it does not feature an external antenna for better signal reception, however we can easily boost the Wi-Fi signal strength and range of any Apple Mac computer using external USB wireless dongles with external antenna. To get this working make sure you have an WiFi USB Adapter which is compatible with Apple Mac OS X and have drivers available for it, luckily for me the Realtek 8191 Chipset based Mini 300Mbps USB Wireless Adapter we used earlier to hack and make Asus O!Play wifi capable did the trick.

Once you have your wireless usb adapter connected to the Mac we need to identify it and install the correct driver for it, We will be using the Mac OS X "System Information" utility (find via spotlight search) to get our hardware information as shown below.

Reboot and Wireless Network Utility Will Launch, Scan your network and Connect using it

As you can see from the screenshot below, we are now successfully connected to a WiFi network which was not visible with my iMac's built-in wireless card - but now works flawlessly with the external USB wifi adapter.

Comments

Got the Bose. Installed a driver off the internet. Mac mini now connects to apple.com but won't connect to any other website. I get a recurring message of "system changes to my network" but can't figure out what to fix or how. Any suggestions?

Hello,
thanks for the post, this works when I want to connect home (just need to insert the key and it connects perfectly). However, how can I connect to my university WIFI where both a password and a USERNAME are needed to connect ???? There is no room to enter a username.

help with usb wifi dongle adapter add-on...this was done, but the syncing features of iCloud don't work/function...any ideas on how to remedy this,,,along with portability of handoff options FaceTime connection to iPhone...making calls via iPhone on mac...etc etc etc

Site Search:

Search form

This is just one of the many helpful tips we have posted, You can find more stories here, Do subscribe to updates using your favorite RSS feed reader or using the secure FeedBurner email update form on top of this post.